Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Battle of the Lonely Tower - Warcry

I tested out my new fantasy game "Warcry" with a skirmish sized battle in my last post, so today I decided to give a large battle a try. The rulebook suggests 1250 pts for a large battle, so I drew up lists for Elves and Dwarves.

Dwarves: 2 Champions: Mordron Stone, Dwarf King, who makes his unit immune to magic, and Thane Grud, his right hand man who gives his unit the ability to ignore kills on a '6'. 60 pts total.

Ranger x15, 405 pts. armed with Crossbows.

Two units of Heavy Foot, 15 strong each, total of 780 pts.

Total: 1245 pts.

Elves: Phandulf the Clever, Elvish Wizard. He has 5 spells, "Summon Wolf", "No Move", "No Attack" and two "Mage Kill", which were wasted as the Dwarves had no mages. 150 pts.

Spider Archers x20, 600 pts, skirmishing archers. Skirmishers get an extra movement phase.
Scorpion Cavalry x10, 200 pts, Light cavalry armed with javelins.
Wasp Hoplites x17, 289 pts elves with spears who can fight in two ranks.

Total 1239 pts.

The rulebook suggested several victory conditions to choose from, I decided to go with the basic 80%  losses and you're done.

The Lonely Tower - so old that no one could remember who had built her, had stood on the border between Elfland and the Dwarven Rockhold since time immemorial. Phandulf the Clever, wizard of the Elves, knew the Tower contained a Nexus giving control of the weather to whoever delved its secrets, and the power to end the drought that had withered the elves forests and fields. But Mordron Stone, king of the Rockhold, mistrusted the elves intentions. He feared the elves would send endless rain to flood the dwarves mines. As Phandulf and his elves approached the tower, the dwarves stood waiting.

On the left, front to back: dwarf heavy infantry, rangers, heavy infantry. The right: Elf archers, cavalry, spearmen. The lonely tower silently broods in the distance.

The elven army. Phandulf the Clever has his spells ready.

The Dwarves. King Mordon leads the left unit, Thane the right.

Archers adopt their skirmish formation, arrows at the ready.

Dwarf heavy infantry charges the elf spears.

Fleet of foot elf cavalry charges the dwarf rangers before a single volley can be launched.

Dwarves take heavy causalties from the more numerous elf archers.

Long slog ahead.

Phandulf attempts to summon a monster...and fails.

King Mordrons unit is suffering

The elf cavalry is getting the worst of it.

And now they're all dead.

But Mordrons heavy infantry suffer a similar fate. The king goes to join his rangers.

The dwarf rangers attempt to come to grips with the elves, but they quickly skirmish away.

Elf spearmen finally triumph over dwarves. Thane makes a strategic withdrawal.
King Mordron howled in rage. "You elvish cowards! Come and fight my mighty warriors!" The fleet-of-foot elves mocked him from afar, knowing full well they could use their superior speed and longer ranged long bows to lead the Dwarf king and his rangers a merry dance for as long as they wished, slowly and inevitably destroying what was left of Mordrons army. King Mordron of the Dwarves spat in disgust as he and his surviving dwarves marched off the battlefield, leaving the elves in control of the Lonely Tower. Phandulf the clever, mystic senses alert for danger, entered the tower to wrest its secrets.

Thus ends my second game of Warcry. Even with the bigger armies it still lasted only about an hour, which is great. Of the three spells Phandulf cast, only one succeeded, he cast No Move and delayed the Dwarf Rangers for a turn. He failed to summon a monster, or keep a unit from attacking. Warcry limits an army to having no more than 50% of its troops be skirmishers, to minimize inconclusive battles where one side can evade forever. All in all I had fun, this game is super simple, something to throw on the table now and then for a little fun. Thanks for reading!